


Slip Stitch

by shiromori



Category: RPS, fassavoy - Fandom, mcfassy - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-25
Updated: 2013-10-25
Packaged: 2017-12-30 10:01:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1017266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiromori/pseuds/shiromori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>McFassy Autumn Extravaganza entry for Pripple's prompt:</p><p> </p><p>  <i>They decide to knit scarves for each other.  James is very good at it, but Michael ends up with something that is definitely not a scarf.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Slip Stitch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pripple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pripple/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [【授权翻译】Slip Stitch 跳针](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1800127) by [Orchid Ember (YAOIisJUSTICE)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/YAOIisJUSTICE/pseuds/Orchid%20Ember)



> Check out the lovely [scarves](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1018259) that [Significantowl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/significantowl/pseuds/significantowl%22) made to go along with the story.

Overhead, the sky was a crisp, pure blue - the glorious colour that only comes in the early fall when the high sun of summer has given up its hold, but the grey of winter hasn’t yet set in. The trees were a blaze of scarlet, beautiful against the blue - beautiful enough to make a person not regret the loss of summer’s vibrant, vital green. The leaves, grown dry and brittle, swayed and whispered in the susurrating breeze. There was dampness in the air, the mildest suggestion of rain.

“There won’t be many more days like this,” James remarked, mostly to himself, but Michael, walking along beside him with his hands thrust into his pockets and his shoulders hunched against the chill, turned to look at him when he spoke.

“Hmn?”

“Days like this, I said. The sun, the breeze,” James elaborated. “In another week or so, it’ll be rain, then sleet, and then we’ll be into winter.”

“Don’t remind me,” Michael answered. “You’ll spoil it.” And, James thought, he did seem to be making a stubborn attempt not to concede to the changing season. Michael wore nothing but a light jumper. No jacket, no scarf. And God knew he hadn’t an ounce of fat on him to keep him warm. It was no wonder he was shivering.

“Haven’t you got a scarf or something?” James asked, because it was October and the sun was all show and no warmth.

“I do somewhere,” Michael shrugged. “I packed it away last spring. I don’t remember where.”

“Well, where do you usually put it?” James asked, and Michael only shrugged again. “Wherever,” he said, and James shook his head with a sort of fond exasperation. “Well, that’s your problem.”

“You haven’t got one,” Michael observed, but James said, “I’m not the one whose teeth are chattering.”

“They aren’t,” Michael said, and when James only looked at him, he said, “Oh, fuck off,” but there was a smile pulling at his lips.

 

********

 

“What’s this?” Michael asked when, the next time he saw him, James pressed a soft paper-wrapped package into his hands.

“Just open it,” James said with a smile and a spark of pleasure and anticipation in his eyes.

“It’s not my birthday,” Michael said, and James rolled his eyes. “I know that,” he said, as if he needed to be told.

Curiously, Michael peeled back the paper. His fingers touched soft wool. “It’s… a scarf?” He pulled the article free from its wrapping, and it unfurled over his hands, the long fringe slipping between his fingers. “You didn’t have to,” he said, touched and a little embarrassed.

“I wanted to,” James answered blithely. “You said you didn’t have one. And it was nothing, really. I used to knit bears for the children’s hospital. This was easier.”

“You made this?” Michael asked, astounded, and he looked at the scarf with new admiration. The pattern of neat little chevrons was variegated, shifting from red, to gold, to copper, to brown like the leaves on the trees. It was as though James had given him a piece of autumn, Michael thought, but he kept that thought to himself. Even in his head, it sounded ridiculously sentimental.

“Put it on,” James said eagerly, and Michael did. It settled over his neck with a pleasant weight, like a friendly hand resting there. “Oh,” he said, because it was so soft. So deliciously soft. He rubbed it against his cheek in pleasure and saw James smile.

“You like it, then?” James asked, and in answer, Michael pulled him into a hug. “I love it,” Michael said, and his arms stayed around James a little longer than was strictly proper, and neither of them cared.

James put his head down, and he felt the plush softness of the scarf against his cheek and the solid warmth of Michael’s shoulder. “I’m glad,” he said.

 

********

 

When Michael decided that he was going to make a scarf for James, there were a few factors that he didn’t take into consideration - first and foremost being that he didn’t know how to knit. The extent of his knowledge on the subject was that it involved wool and needles, and that, to all appearances, it was a skill that spontaneously developed on the birth of grandchildren. But Michael didn’t have that long to wait.

He went to the nearest Hobbycraft, and wandered up and down the aisles, petting and poking balls of yarn, not really sure what he was looking for, until a saleswoman took pity on him. “Is there anything I can help you find, sir?” she asked in a tone that made him think he must look as lost as he felt.

“I want to make a scarf,” he said, which was the goal of this mission which was seeming more ill-advised by the minute.

“For your girlfriend?” the saleswoman asked with a sympathetic smile. She didn’t quite say ‘Awww,’ but it was there in her expression.

“Er, no. It’s, um…” Michael shifted his weight from foot to foot and cleared his throat needlessly. “It’s for a friend,” he said, and saw the woman’s smile turn conspiratory. Perfect, Michael thought. He’d just made it worse.

“Don’t worry,” the saleswoman said. “We’ll get you all sorted out. Now. Crochet or knit?”

That’s where she lost him.

Nearly half an hour later, Michael left the store with three sizes of needles (he hadn’t known there were sizes), a bag full of the softest yarn he could find, and a book full of pictures and diagrams emblazoned with the title “The Knitting Bible.”

At home, Michael opened the book and was immediately impressed and intimidated by the incredible array of complicated stitches listed in the index. The charts were all an indecipherable collection of dots and boxes which would probably have been instructive to someone like James but which looked to Michael like nothing so much as a game of connect-the-dots from which the numbers had been removed.

“I’m getting ahead of myself,” he told himself, and flipped back to the front of the book where no assumptions were being made about his ability beyond the fact that he could tell which end of a needle was the business end (the pointy one). Taking a deep, fortifying breath, Michael began with ‘Casting On’, and went from there.

Two hours later, he called his mother.

 

********

 

Michael clutched the bag to his chest. The paper was wrinkled and soft, slightly damp from his sweating hands. He held out the bag to James like a baby or a bomb - something that had to be handled carefully. James, seeing his apprehension, accepted the package with a small perplexed frown. “What’s the occasion?” he asked, and Michael shrugged evasively.

“Oh, nothing. Just, you know…” He didn’t finish his sentence. His hands, free of their burden, fell to fidgeting, twisting in the long fringe of James’ scarf. He had worn the scarf every day since it had been given to him - even when, one weekend, the temperature had reached a mellow 19ºC, and James had remarked: wouldn’t he be more comfortable without it?

Sensing that maybe he shouldn’t ask, James opened the plain paper bag and peered inside. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was a lump of knitted something at the bottom. James reached in to pull it out… and pulled, and pulled. “It’s, um…” he said when he had all its loops and coils in his hands, not entirely sure what he had, exactly.

“A scarf,” Michael supplied with a sort of reticence that said he knew that might not be immediately apparent.

“Of course, a scarf. I see,” James said immediately, covering admirably. “Look at that.” He held it up and the “scarf” hung down past his knees, nearly as long as he was tall. It was rough and uneven, curled in on itself where Michael had used too much tension. Because it was obvious that Michael had made it himself. It was done in a heavy, thick and unvarying garter stitch, irregularly striped where Michael had changed colours on the wrong side to make a pattern of wide alternating bands. By the second foot of the scarf, he seemed to have gotten the hang of it, but here and there, James could see little puckers where Michael had dropped stitches and tried to mend the holes after the fact. But perhaps the most baffling thing about the offering was the colour. “It’s very… cheery,” was all James could think to say of the broad blocks of fuchsia and eye-searing green.

“Well, you know, I thought winter is sort of grey, so, you know, some colour might be nice…” Michael was talking to his feet. His boot scuffed in the carpet of wet leaves, filling the air with their earthy smell.

“That’s true, too,” James agreed, and he wound the scarf around - and around - his neck. It was softer than it looked, like Michael had chosen the yarn with his hands rather than his eyes. “How does it look?” he asked.

Michael looked up then, his expression slightly pained. “You really don’t have to wear that,” he said. He knew exactly how terrible it looked, but he’d wanted to give it to James anyway. He’d wanted James to know that he’d tried. It seemed stupid now.

“I want to,” James replied, and he stood there smiling, not caring how ridiculous he looked.

Michael reached out, he took hold of both ends of the scarf, and James opened his mouth to protest - to say that, really, it was all right; he _liked_ the scarf - but Michael reeled him in with the length of it, and their mouths collided. Teeth clacked together awkwardly, painfully, but Michael’s hands came up until he was holding James’ neck, not just the scarf, and his mouth gentled, settling more securely against James’. Michael’s fingers curled into the hair at the nape of James’ neck and he kissed him until James thought dizzily that he might have to break away just to breathe, but then Michael drew away first, only a little. The ends of the scarf slipped through his fingers.

“It’s a hideous scarf,” Michael said, close enough that his breath warmed James' cheek.

“It’s not,” James protested charitably, and it was all Michael could do not to kiss him again just for that.

“I’m a crap knitter,” Michael said, and James saw the smile hiding in the corners of his mouth.

“You really are,” James agreed honestly with an answering grin. “Absolutely shite.”

“I can’t believe you actually put it on,” Michael said, and James smile twitched and shifted. The spark lit in his eyes again.

“Well, it was good for something.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Fiber Art] Slip Stitch](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1018259) by [significantowl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/significantowl/pseuds/significantowl)
  * [you make me lose control](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7125007) by [twinklingpotatoes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twinklingpotatoes/pseuds/twinklingpotatoes)




End file.
